Ch-Ch-Ch-Cherries

My friend Amy (aka Alogue) wants me to make some more Christmas cookies. Only this time she requested a specific KIND. They're a shortbread or sugar cookies with a bit of maraschino cherry on it. Well in order to do that I felt I had to make some cherries. This is a first for me, but the mechanics of it seemed simple enough!

Since I wasn't sure if my translucent red would make a sufficiently 'cherry' color, I decided to experiment. I mixed some cherry red with some translucent red, and some cherry red with some translucent white.

And got virtually the same result.

To get an evenly sized thickness, I pushed the clay through a metal nozzle tip from a cake decorating set and slices to roughly uniform sizes.

I did about a dozen of the tiny ones before I decided I'd make some larger ones too. I rolled them and poked them with my ball-ended needle to get the right look to them.

I think this was after they came out of the oven. There's some thin green clay strips for the stems (and for sprinkles for other projects). I also rolled a cherry just from translucent red clay (which, incidentally, is pretty much the color of glazed cherries... V_V) and some from purple and red clay... and then a plum - which turned out pretty good! - from the leftovers.

I think the end result was pretty good, don't you? I didn't stem them all, but I did do a few...

Just a little gloss and those cherries will be perfect.

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

You would think I have that song stuck in my head right now, but you'd be wrong. Instead I've got Shots by LMFAO stuck in there, because my Canucks rocked it in Rogers Arena tonight. Puts me in such a good mood!

But you can't ignore the fact that Christmas is approaching! Some places even have snow! (But not Vancouver, which is fine with me!) Normally my Mom would've started her Christmas baking by now. Since I'm no longer living at home, I decided I needed to do some Christmas baking of my own.

Sugar cookies have to be my all-time favorite cookie. When made properly they practically melt on the tongue. And you can put all sorts of decorations on top, like icing and mini ball bearings.

I followed another tutorial, this one from DeviantArt. In the picture above you can see my new (and overpriced) Sculpey mat that I bought from Michaels the other day. Thus far it seems to be worth the cost, and it's nice to have a little spot beside me to work from. These were cut out using some mini-sized clay cutters. I found it much easier to apply the pastel to the cookies while they were resting on the blade.

I mixed brown, yellow and orange pastel to get the brown color, but next time I'll add a little white to lighten it up. The cookies look burnt! But no less tasty.

My Fairyland Littlefee Leah agrees!

A picture showing scale was requested. I think these would be best for Littlefee/YOSD or Minifee/MSD sized dolls, but what Pukifee doesn't love a giant cookie?

With my clay station set up beside my desk, it should be easier for me to work on projects on a more regular basis. I actually worked on the sugar cookies with a small audience in the Minifee TinyChat. I'll probably do this more often, and if people are interested enough in watching maybe I'll set a specific day or time to work.

<3 Saryn